George Ayittey – TED Bloghttp://blog.ted.com
The TED Blog shares interesting news about TED, TED Talks video, the TED Prize and more.Fri, 18 Aug 2017 03:02:08 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://1.gravatar.com/blavatar/909a50edb567d0e7b04dd0bcb5f58306?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngGeorge Ayittey – TED Bloghttp://blog.ted.com
George Ayittey on "Dead Aid"http://blog.ted.com/ayittey_on_dead_aid/
http://blog.ted.com/ayittey_on_dead_aid/#commentsThu, 09 Apr 2009 16:00:00 +0000http://blog-staging.ted.com/2009/04/ayittey_on_dead_aid/[…]]]>Economist George Ayittey gave a blistering talk at TEDGlobal 2007, laying out his case that not only has Western aid not helped in most African countries — it’s actually hurting.

We asked Ayittey for his thoughts on the new book Dead Aid, which has lately been burning up the talk shows and opinion columns with a message similar to Ayittey’s. Author Dambisa Moyo says that aid is killing the very countries it’s supposed to help. She singles out for criticism the celebrity crusades to “save Africa,” and the skewing view they present of African life.

Dambisa Moyo’s new book is drawing new attention to the question of aid in Africa, and her thesis is quite like yours, but aimed at a mass-market audience (as she said on Charlie Rose). Do you think it is risky to sensationalize the issue?

I don’t think Dambisa is sensationalizing the issue strong enough. Americans were justifiably outraged when AIG, which received billions in U.S. taxpayer money in bailouts, paid out hefty bonuses to its executives. So where is the outrage when African leaders, who receive U.S. taxpayers’ money in foreign aid, build palaces for themselves while their people wallow in abject poverty?

More important, the presumption that Africans don’t know what is good for them and that Americans or other foreigners know what is best for Africans is extremely offensive. If you want to help American farmers, you ask them what sort of help they need and whether such assistance is working. Why don’t Americans ask Africans what type of aid they need and whether the aid Americans have provided is working? So what is wrong with an African, Dambisa, telling Americans that the foreign aid they are providing isn’t working and it is “Dead Aid”?

It’s clear that Moyo’s thesis draws from your work. How would you respond to those who assert that her views and yours are idealistic and ideological?

Our critics have not been paying attention to the literature on foreign aid. Our views are neither idealistic nor ideological but rather factual. There are three types of foreign aid: humanitarian relief aid, given to victims of natural disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones and floods; military aid; and economic development assistance. We have no qualms with humanitarian aid, and I am sure our critics would agree that military aid to tyrannical regimes in Africa is the least desirable. Much confusion, however, surrounds the third, also known as official development assistance or ODA. Contrary to popular misconceptions, ODA is not “free.” It is essentially a “soft loan,” or loan granted on extremely generous or “concessionary” terms.

The consensus that emerged decades ago was that foreign aid had not been effective in reversing Africa’s economic decline. Dambisa and I are simply restating a fact. And it is not just Africa. That foreign aid has failed to accelerate economic development in the Third World generally was also accepted. In 1999, the United Nations declared that 70 countries — aid recipients all — are now poorer than they were in 1980. An incredible 43 were worse off than in 1970. “Chaos, slaughter, poverty and ruin stalked Third World states, irrespective of how much foreign assistance they received,” wrote the Washington Post, on Nov. 25, 1999. Except for Haiti, all of the 13 foreign aid failures cited — Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, Chad, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Zaire, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Sudan — were in Sub-Saharan Africa. The African countries that received the most aid — Somalia, Liberia and Zaire — slid into virtual anarchy.

Is there a fundamental place where you diverge from Moyo?

Though we are both on point regarding the failure of aid programs in Africa, we diverge in two respects.

First, Dambisa wants all aid to Africa stopped in five years, which won’t happen. Over the decades, various African civic groups and persons, including myself, have called for a cutoff of aid to Africa. In a report drafted during a five-day forum hosted by UNESCO in Paris in 1995, more than 500 African political and civic leaders urged donor nations to cut off funds to African dictatorships and called for free elections in such nations within two years. If the West could impose sanctions against Libya and South Africa, then Africans could also call for sanctions against their own illegal regimes.

Second, I believe that the foreign aid resources Africa desperately needs to launch into self-sustaining growth and prosperity can be found in Africa itself, not in China as Dambisa believes.

Moyo’s work speaks to that deep urge among Westerners to “do something” — even something that may be deeply unproductive. What’s a more productive way to “do something”?

I think Westerners should resist that urge to “do something,” because the worst type of help one can receive is that which doesn’t solve your problem but compounds it. If Westerners want to help, they must carefully scrutinize and reform current aid policies to make them more effective. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations tried to but failed. Business as usual is no longer an option, which is what both Dambisa and I are against.

Foreign aid should be tied not on promises of African leaders but to the establishment of a few critical institutions:

+ An independent central bank: to assure monetary and economic stability, as well as stanch capital flight out of Africa. If possible, governors of central banks in a region, say West Africa, may be rotated to achieve such independence. The importance of this institution resides in the fact that the ruling bandits not only plunder the central bank but also use its facilities to transfer the loot abroad.

+ An independent judiciary — essential for the rule of law. Supreme Court judges may also be rotated within a region.

+ A free and independent media to ensure free flow of information. The first step is solving a social problem is to expose it, which is the business of news practitioners. The state-controlled or state-owned media would not expose corruption, repression, human rights violations and other crimes against humanity. In fact, it is far easier to plunder and repress people when they are kept in the dark. The media needs to be taken out of the hands of government.

+ An efficient and professional civil service, which will deliver essential social services to the people on the basis of need and not on the basis of ethnicity or political affiliation.

+ The establishment of a neutral and professional armed and security forces.

The establishment of these institutions would empower Africans to instigate change from within. For example, the two great antidotes against corruption are an independent media and an independent judiciary. But only 8 African countries have a free media in 2003, according Freedom House. These institutions cannot be established by the leaders or the ruling elites (conflict of interest); they must be established by civil society. Each professional body has a “code of ethics,” which should be re-written by the members themselves to eschew politics and uphold professionalism. Start with the “military code,” and then the “bar code,” the “civil service code” and so on. These reforms, in turn, will help establish in Africa an environment conductive to investment and economic activity. But the leadership is not interested. Period.

Effective foreign aid programs are those that are “institution-based.” Give Africa the above 6 critical institutions and the people will do the rest of the job.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/ayittey_on_dead_aid/feed/24tedstaffGeorgeAyittey_2007G-blog_interview.jpgus195x284.jpgArchive: George Ayittey on Cheetahs vs. Hippos for the soul of Africahttps://www.ted.com/talks/george_ayittey_on_cheetahs_vs_hippos?language=en
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:00:00 +0000http://blog-staging.ted.com/2008/08/archive_george/[…]]]>For the next two weeks, we’re presenting some of our favorite TEDTalks from among the 270+ talks and performances we’ve posted since June 2006. Look for brand-new TEDTalks starting August 18. Until then, enjoy these gems — and suggest your own by writing to contact@ted.com or joining the conversation on TED.com.

]]>tedstaffVote for your favorite public intellectualshttp://blog.ted.com/vote_for_your_f/
Thu, 01 May 2008 13:28:31 +0000http://blog-staging.ted.com/2008/05/vote_for_your_f/[…]]]>Not to be outdone by the Time 100, the journals Foreign Policy and Prospect have together released a list of the Top 100 public intellectuals — with voting. Many TEDTalks favorites appear on the list, and you can help choose the eventual top 20 by voting for your very own top 5. From Foreign Policy‘s site:

Although the men and women on this list are some of the world’s most sophisticated thinkers, the criteria to make the list could not be more simple. Candidates must be living and still active in public life. They must have shown distinction in their particular field as well as an ability to influence wider debate, often far beyond the borders of their own country.

First of all, let me thank America for, as a matter of fact, TED Global, for putting this conference together. And, this conference is going to rank as the most important in the beginning of the 21st century. Think African governments will put together a conference like this? Think the AU will put together a conference like this? Even before they will do that, they will ask for foreign aid. (laughter) Also I would like to pay homage and honor to the TED fellows June Arunga, James Shikwati, Andrew and the other TED fellows. I call them the ‘cheetah generation.’ The cheetah generation is a new breed of Africans. Who brook no nonsense about corruption. They understand what accountability and democracy is. They’re not going to wait for government to do things for them. That’s the cheetah generation. And Africa’s salvation rests on the backs of these cheetahs.

In contrast, of course, we have the ‘hippo generation.’ (laughter) The hippo generation are the ruling elites. They are stuck in their intellectual patch, complaining about colonialism and imperialism. They wouldn’t move one foot. You ask them to reform the economies, they’re not going to reform it, because they benefit from the rotten status quo.

Now, there are a lot of Africans who are very angry. Angry at a condition of Africa. Now, we’re talking about a continent, which is not poor. It is rich in mineral resources, natural mineral resources. But the mineral wealth of Africa has not been utilized to lift its people out of poverty. That’s what makes a lot of Africans very angry. And, in a way, Africa is more than a tragedy, more ways than one. There’s another enduring tragedy and that tragedy is there are so many people, so many governments, so many organizations who want to help the people in Africa. They don’t understand.
Now, we’re not saying don’t help Africa, helping Africa is noble. But helping Africa has been turned into a theater of the absurd. It’s like the blind leading the clueless. There are certain things that we need to recognize. Africa’s begging bowl leaks. Did you know that 40% off the wealth created in Africa is not invested here in Africa? It’s taken out of Africa. That’s what the World Bank says. Look at Africa’s begging bowl. It leaks, horribly. There are people who think that we should pour more money, more aid into this bowl, which leaks.

What are the leakages? Corruption alone costs Africa more than 148 billion dollars a year. Yet, put that aside, capital flight out of Africa, 80 billion a year. Put that aside, let’s take food imports. Every year, Africa spends 20 billion dollars to import food. Just add that up, all these leakages. That’s far more than the 50 billion Tony Blair wants to raise for Africa.

Now, back in the 1960s, Africa not only fed itself, it also exported food. Not anymore. We know that something has gone fundamentally wrong. You know it. I know it. But let’s not waste our time talking about these mistakes, because we spent all day here. Let’s move on and flip over to the next chapter. And that’s what this conference is all about, the next chapter.

The next chapter begins with, first of all, asking ourselves this fundamental question: Who do we want to help in Africa? There’s the people and then there’s the government or leaders. Now, the speaker before me, the previous speaker before me, Idris Mohammed, indicated that we’ve had abysmal leadership in Africa. That characterization, in my view, is even more charitable. I belong to an Internet discussion forum, an African internet discussion forum, and I ask them – I said, since 1960, we’ve had exactly 204 African heads of state, since 1960. And I asked them to name me just 20 good leaders. Just 20 good leaders. Maybe, you may want to take this, you know, leadership challenges, you know, yourself. I asked them to name me just 20. Everybody mentioned Nelson Mandela, of course, Kwame Nkrumah, (Julius) Nyerere, (Jomo) Kenyatta, somebody mentioned Idi Amin. (laughter) I let that pass. (more laughter). The point is, they couldn’t go beyond 15. Even if they had been able to name me 20, what does that tell you? 20 out of 204 means that the majority, the vast majority of the African leaders failed their people. And if you look at them, the slate of the post-colonial leaders, an assortment of military fu fu heads, Swiss bank socialists, crocodile liberators, vampire elite, quack revolutionaries. (applause) Now, this leadership is a far cry from the traditional leaders that Africans have known for centuries. The second false premise that we make when we’re trying to help Africa is that sometimes we think that there is something called a government in Africa that cares about its people, serves the interests of the people and represents the people.

There is one particular quote a Lesotho chief once says, that “here in Lesotho we’ve got two problems: Rats and the government.” (laughter) What you and I understand as a government, doesn’t exist in many African countries. In fact, what we call our governments are vampire states. “Vampires” is because they suck the economic vitality out of their people. Government is a problem in Africa. A vampire state is a government which has been hijacked by a phalanx of bandits and crooks, who use the instruments of state power to enrich themselves, their cronies and tribesmen, and exclude everybody else. The richest people in Africa are heads of state. They’re menaces and quite often the chief bandit is the head of state himself. Where do they get their money? By creating wealth? No! By raking it off the backs of their sovereign people. That’s not wealth creation. It’s wealth redistribution.

The third fundamental issue that we have to recognize is that if we want to help the African people, we must know where the African people are. Take any African economy. An African economy can be broken up into three sectors: there is the modern sector; there is the informal sector; and the traditional sector. The modern sector is the abode of the elites; it’s the seat of government. Many African countries, the modern sector is lost. It’s dysfunctional. It is a meretricious fandango of imported systems, which the elites themselves don’t understand. That is the source of many of Africa’s problems. Where the struggles for political power emanate and, then, spill over onto the informal and the traditional sector, claiming innocent lives.

Now, the modern sector, of course, is where a lot of the development aid and resources went into. More than 80 % of Ivory Coast development went into the modern sector. The other sectors, the informal and the traditional sector, are where you find the majority of the African people, the real people in Africa. That’s where you find them. And obviously that’s common sense. That if you want to help the people, you go where the people are.
But that’s not what we did. As a matter of fact, we neglected the informal and the traditional sectors. The traditional sector is where Africa produces its agriculture. Which is one of the reasons why Africa can’t feed itself. And that’s why it must import food. You cannot develop Africa by ignoring the informal and the traditional sectors. And you can’t develop the informal and the traditional sectors without an operational understanding of how these two sectors work.

These two sectors, let me describe to you, have their own indigenous institutions. First one is the political system. Traditionally, Africans hate governments. They hate tyranny. If you look into their traditional systems, Africans organize their states in two types. The first one belong to those ethnic societies who believe that the state was necessarily tyrannic, so they didn’t want to have anything to do with any centralized authority. These societies are the Igbo, the Somali, the Kikuyus, for example. They have no chiefs. The other ethnic groups, which did have chiefs, made sure that they surrounded the chiefs with councils upon councils upon councils to prevent them from abusing their power. In Ashanti, for example, a chief cannot make any decision without a concurrence of the council of elders. Without the council, the chief cannot pass any law. And if the chief doesn’t govern according to the will of the people, he will be removed. If not, the people will abandon the chief, go somewhere else and set up a new settlement. And even if you look in ancient African empires, they were all organized around one particular principle, the confederacy principal, which is characterized by a great deal of devolution of authority, decentralization of power.

Now, this is what I’ve described to you, this is part of Africa’s indigenous political heritage. Now, compare that to the modern systems the ruling elites established on Africa. It’s a total far cry. In the economic system in traditional Africa, the means of production is privately owned. It’s owned by extended families. See, in the west, the basic economic and social unit is the individual. The Americans who say, “I am because I am and I can damn well do anything I want, anytime.” The accent is on the ‘I’. In Africa, the Africans say, “I am because we are.” The ‘we’ connotes community, the extended family system. The extended family system pools its resources together. They own farms. They decide what to do, what to produce. They’re not taking the orders from their chiefs. They decide what to do and when they produce their crops. They sell the surplus on marketplaces. When they make a profit, it is theirs to keep, not for the chief to sequester it from them.

In a nutshell, what we had in traditional Africa was a free market system. There were markets in Africa before the colonialists stepped foot on the continent. Timbuktu was one great big market town. Kano, Salaga, they were all there. Even if you go to West Africa, you notice that market activity in West Africa, has always been dominated by women. So, it’s quite appropriate that this section is called a market place. The market is not alien to Africa. What Africans practiced was a different form of capitalism. But then, after independence, all of a sudden, markets, capitalism became a western institution. And the leaders say Africans were ready for socialism. Nonsense! And even then, what kind of socialism did they practice? The socialism that they practiced was a peculiar form of Swiss bank socialism which allowed a head of states and the ministers to rip and plunder Africa’s treasuries for deposit in Switzerland. That is not a kind of system Africans had known for centuries.

What do we do now? Go back to Africa’s indigenous institutions. And this is where we try to get, to go into the informal sectors, the traditional sectors. That’s where you find the African people. And I’d like to show you a quick little video, about a informal sector about the boat builder that I myself tried to mobilize Africans in the Diaspora to invest in.

Could you please show that? (Video starts- 15:41- crowded harbor, boat builders) (talking over video, starts at 16:04- narration at beginning is very low in volume and obscured by video sound). Traditionally, boat building, small boats, there’s an enterprise. This is by a local Ghanaian entrepreneur using his own capital. He’s getting no assistance from the government and he’s building such a boat. A bigger boat will mean that more fish will be, will be caught, and landed, means that he will be able to employ more Ghanaians. It also means that he will be able to generate wealth and then it will have what economists call external effects on a local economy. All that you need to do, all that the elites need to do is to move this operation into something, which is enclosed so that the operation can be made more efficient.

Now, it is not just this informal sector. There is also traditional medicine. 80% of Africans still rely on traditional medicine. The modern health sector has totally collapsed. Now, this is an area, I mean, there is a treasure trove of wealth in the traditional medicine area. This is where we need to mobilize Africans, in the Diaspora especially, to invest in this. We also need to mobilize Africans in the Diaspora, not only to go into the traditional sectors, also, but to go into agriculture and, also, to instigate change from within. We were able to mobilize Ghanaians in the Diaspora to instigate change in Ghana and bring about democracy in Ghana. And I know that with the cheetahs, we can take Africa back, one village at a time. Thank you very much. [Transcription by Robert Thomas Carter]

“What we call governments are vampire states, which suck the economic vitality out of the people.” — Economist George Ayittey

“I want to make Africans rich. If you make Africans rich, they’ll be less poor. That’s my development strategy.” — Private equity pioneer Idris Mohammed

“What we’re trying to do is create a family tree for everyone alive today.” — Anthropologist and geneticist Spencer Wells, who’s leading the Genographic Project, a landmark study tracing human origins to their roots in Africa

“There is no region of the world and no period in history that farmers have had to bear the burden of risk that African farmers bear today. But I’m not here to lament or wring my hands. I’m here to tell you that change is in the air.” — Economist Eleni Gabre-Madhin, who is founding the first commodities market for farmers in Ethiopia

“World progress needs a good dose of spontaneous human intelligence to realize that the answers to many of the questions we ask ourselves are just around the corner.” — Architect Issa Diabete, who draws inspiration from innovative, makeshift urban solutions found in Africa’s sprawling squatter cities

“I’m hopeful because nature is amazing resilient. Seemingly dead tree stumps — if you stop hacking them for firewood, in 10 years you can have a 30 ft tree.” — Primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall

“I am a mathematician and I would like to stand on your roof.” — Mathematician Ron Eglash’s standard greeting to African families, when he was researching the intriguing fractal patterns observed in many villages across the continent

Technorati tags: tedglobal2007

]]>junecohenGeorge Ayittey's critique of "coconut republics" — too good to keep to ourselveshttp://blog.ted.com/george_ayitteys/
http://blog.ted.com/george_ayitteys/#commentsMon, 04 Jun 2007 10:29:49 +0000http://blog-staging.ted.com/2007/06/george_ayitteys/[…]]]>In the months before each TED, we ask speakers to fill in a short, casual questionnaire for the program guide, answering questions like “Who are your heroes?” and “Family apart, what are you most proud of?” Most speakers write a sentence or two for each. But for TEDGlobal 2007, iconoclastic Ghanaian economist George Ayittey took it to a whole different level. His Q&A came back as a 6-page polemic, including a sharp, off-the-cuff dissection of the toxic “coconut republics” of Africa. Powerful and funny, it was too good to keep to ourselves.

CONTROVERSY. But my admirers refer to me as “unorthodox,” “unscripted” or “The Cutlass (machete),” who slashes through the thicket of suffocating platitudes and excuses to deliver the bitter truth about post colonial Africa.” Personally, I regard myself as an intellectual “rebel,” kicking against the old “colonialism-imperialism paradigm” which has landed Africa in a conundrum. By this paradigm, everything wrong with Africa is the fault of somebody else — hostile external forces (Western colonialism, imperialism, the World Bank, etc.) and never the fault of misguided leadership. Witness Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

I am known for pushing the view that the old paradigm is now obsolete. It is kaput. We need a new way of thinking or a new paradigm that stresses the importance of internal factors as well. For example, brutal political tyranny, arrant economic mismanage, rampant corruption and senseless civil wars have nothing to do with artificial colonial borders or Western imperialism. Rebel leaders do not seek to redraw boundaries; they head straight to the capital city because that’s where power lies.

What are you working on now?

To save Zimbabwe from implosion. We hope to achieve peaceful change in Zimbabwe through the convocation of a “Sovereign National Conference.” It is the same mechanism (the Convention for a Democratic South Africa — CODESA) which was used to dismantle apartheid in South Africa. If it worked in South Africa, then it will work in Zimbabwe.

What are the five words that best describe you?

“African solutions for African problems” — exactly five words. I coined that expression in 1992 when the international community mounted “Operation Rescue” to save Somalia. I argued in a Wall Street Journal editorial what the Somali crisis was an African problem requiring an African solution. I was proved right. The U.N. and the U.S. pulled out of Somali in 1993, bringing an end to the international rescue mission which cost $3.5 billion.

Who are your heroes?

Africa’s peasants. In particular,

* The women farmers who break their backs to produce food,

* The women traders, who bring food surpluses to the markets,

* The native African fishermen, who, without the aid of modern navigational tools, manage to go to sea and return safely to land their catches of fish.

* The native African artisans and craftsmen, who use their own ingenuity to weave one the world’s most beautiful cloths (kente), carve masks and sculptures (the stone sculptures of Zimbabwe).

What products (or books, music, films) have you created?

I have written five books on Africa, established the Free Africa Foundation to advance the cause of freedom in Africa. “Africa is poor because she is not free” is our motto. I have also established “Malaria Free Zones” where we take an African village of about 1,000 people, spray the village to rid it of mosquitoes and give free insecticide-treated bed nets and anti-malarial drugs to the villages. We have established these MFZs in Ghana, Benin, Nigeria and Kenya. We work in collaboration with the village traditional authorities. We have also built a school library for the school children in Nkyenekyene (Ghana), a medical clinic at Obregyimah (Ghana) and provided microcredit loans to 100 village women at Teacher Mante (Ghana).

Family apart, what are you most proud of?

Tossing out of office the tyrannical regime of Fte./Lte. Jerry Rawlings in 2000 through the ballot box and establish real democracy in Ghana. President John Kufuor describes me as “one of the architects of change” in Ghana. I worked with activists on the ground to corral the squabbling opposition parties into an electoral alliance. We hope to repeat this success in Zimbabwe.

What headline(s) would you like to read about yourself in 2020?

“Ayittey Told You So.” In 1993, I predicted that Rwanda would implode. Nobody took me seriously and I was dismissed as a “doomsayer.” Rwanda blew up in 1994.

In March 1999, I stunned the audience at the Conference in Porto, Portugal, organized by the Mario Soares Foundation (named after Portuguese president, Mario Soares) that Ivory Coast, Togo, and Zimbabwe will implode.

Nine months later, in Dec 1999, General Robert Guie staged a military coup in Ivory Coast, setting in motion events that eventually culminated in a civil war in Sept 2000.
Earlier in March 2000, the descent of Zimbabwe into chaos and economic collapse began with fraudulent elections. Togo blew up in 2005.

That the solutions to Africa’s myriad problems lie in Africa itself and they entail returning to and building upon Africa’s own indigenous institutions of private ownership of the means of production, free village markets, free enterprise and free trade.

Politics apart, what drives you crazy?

Tomfoolery in a “coconut republic.” This invites a comparison with a banana republic. In a banana republic, one might slip on a banana peel but things do work — now and then for the people, albeit inefficiently and unreliably. The water tap has a mind of its own. Occasionally, it might spit some water and then change its mind. Buses operate according to their own internal clock, set according to Martian time — whatever that is. By the grace of God or Allah, a bus might arrive, belching thick black smoke. Food and gasoline are generally available but expensive, if one is willing to contend with occasional long lines. The police are helpful sometimes and protect the people by catching real crooks. There is petty corruption. Now and then, a million dollars here and a million there might be embezzled. Such a banana republic often slips into suspended animation or arrested development.

A coconut republic, on the other hand, is ruthlessly inefficient, lethal and eventually implodes. Instead of a banana peel, one might step on a live grenade. Here, the entire notion of “governance” has been turned completely on its head by the ruling bandits. The chief bandit is the head of state himself. Their water taps run all the time; the people can collect rain water. There are inexhaustible supplies of food and gasoline for them, but not for the people. And there are no buses for the people. Period. Those shiny buses that ply the road are for vampire elites. The people can walk. The republic sits atop vast reserves of oil and exports oil. Yet, there is no gasoline for the people since the country’s oil refineries have broken down. Funds earmarked for repairs had been stolen and refined petroleum products must be imported. The country may also be rich in mineral deposits – such as diamonds, gold, col-tan. Yet, the mineral wealth has produced misery.

A coconut republic is:

1. Where Uganda’s Agriculture Minister, Kibirige Ssebunya, declares that: “All the poor should be arrested because they hinder us from performing our development duties. It is hard to lead the poor, and the poor cannot lead the rich. They should be eliminated” (New Vision, Kampala, Dec 15, 2004). He advised local leaders to arrest poor people in their areas of jurisdiction.

2. Where the country runs out of paper with which to print money (Zimbabwe): “Reserve Bank officials told IRIN that plans to print about Zim$60 trillion (about US$592.9 million) were briefly delayed after the government failed to secure foreign currency to buy ink and special paper for printing money.”

3. Where the government tames hyperinflation by banning price increases: “In Jan 2007, the Government of Zimbabwe said it would tame the country’s 1,600 percent inflation rate by making wage and price increases illegal” (The New York Times, Feb 13, 2007; p.A5)

4. Where the rulers claim they are fighting “terrorists” when they themselves are the real state terrorists (Liberia, Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe). Charles Taylor of Liberia once had an “anti-terrorism unit” run by his son. Even the warlords of Somalia “formed what they call an anti-terrorism coalition” (The New York Times, May 1, 2006).

5. Where the head of stqate, Yahya Jammeh of Gambia, declares that anyone aspiring to his job needed “to wait like a vulture, patiently,” because he planned to stay in office at least 30 years longer” (The New York Times, April 19, 2006; p.A6).

6. Where about $709 million and another ₤144 million recovered from the loot the Abachas and his henchmen stashed abroad were quickly re-looted. “The Senate Public Accounts Committee found only $6.8 million and ₤2.8 million of the recovered booty in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) (The Post Express, July 10, 2000).

7. Where a former minister of finance was found hiding — where else? — in a coconut tree: “Zambia’s former finance minister, Katele Kalumba, was arrested and charged with theft after the police found him hiding in a tree near his rural home. Mr. Kalumba, who had been on the run for four months, is being charged in connection with some $33 million that vanished while he was in office (The New York Times, Jan 16, 2003; p.A8).

8. Where the head of state, General Samuel Doe of Liberia summoned his finance minister — “only to be reminded by aides that he had already executed him” (The New York Times, Sept 13, 2003; p.A4).

9. Where the police are highway robbers and the judges crooks. Tell a police officer that you saw a minister stealing the people’s money and it is YOU he will arrest. Asked to investigate the brutal murders of Robert Ouko and British tourist Julie Ward, Kenya police issued this report: “Foreign Minister Robert Ouko was presumed to have broken his own leg, shot himself in the head and set himself afire. Two years earlier, Kenyan officials suggested that a British tourist, Julie Ward, lopped off her own head and one of her legs before setting herself aflame” (The Washington Post, April 20, 2001; p. A19).

10. Where the police show their courage by fleeing. On 16 December 1998, Corporal C. Darko and Constable K. A. Boateng at a Police Station in Accra, Ghana, were instructed to go and arrest Samuel Quartey, who was reported to police for being involved in a theft case. “When the suspect came out brandishing a cutlass (a machete), the police officers did what most people would have done — took to their heels with the speed of lightning that could have made an enviable record had they been timed” (The Mirror, 2 Jan 1999, 1).

Coconut antics drive me nuts.

What is the one message you would like to send out to the world?

That Africa is capable of solving its own problems and developing. The leadership has been the problem, not the people.

What project of yours would you like to see brought to fruition?

The boat building project which I will talk about at the conference. The traditional way of fishing by dug-out canoes is arduous and limits the size of the catch. So I am working with a local entrepreneur to build bigger boats so that more fish can be landed by the native fishermen. It fits in my philosophy that the best way of moving Africa forward is go back to our “roots” and improve upon the existing ways of doing things. We, African elites, never did this after independence. We imported nearly everything, including nuclear-powered fishing trawlers to speak hyperbolically, never building on our own. A larger boat built domestically will provide jobs, land bigger catches of fish and save foreign exchange.

Even more important, I would like to change the dysfunctional elite mentality. The richest persons in Africa are heads of state, governors and ministers. So every “educated” African who wants to be rich — and there is nothing wrong with wanting to be rich — heads straight into government or politics. I would like to change this mentality and show the elites that they can safely make their riches in the private, informal sector; for example, by improving upon the existing ways of doing things — fishing (building bigger boats), marketing (building better markets, not air-conditioned malls), etc. If they make their money in the informal sector, nobody will haul them before commissions of enquiry come a change of government. Had the elites done this, Africa would have written a better post colonial economic report.

What initiatives related to Africa do you see as most important?

Reform, reform, reform. Reform of the abominable political systems with its concentration of power. Only 16 out of the 54 African countries are democratic. Reform of the statist economic system to grant more economic freedom to the African people, as existed in their own traditional economic systems. And reform of Africa’s dysfunctional institutions. In particular, these six institutions are critical:

An independent and free media (Only 8 African countries have this),
An independent central bank,
An independent electoral commission,
An independent judiciary,
An efficient civil service, and
A neutral and professional security (military and police) forces.

Give Africa these six institutions and Africans will do the rest of the job.